Heartbeat
by KitCat Italica
Summary: Bruce was bitten when he was eight years old, and has sworn to destroy all others of his kind that ravage the mortals of his city – even the most sadistic and unstoppable of them all. Vamp!Bruce/Vamp!Joker, slash, AU, rating for gore and Ch.2 vampiric sex
1. Heartbeat

Heartbeat

The heart of his city beats fierce and tempting below him. He hears it, always hears it. Never leaving him alone, it mocks his yearning teeth that ache for its taste. Fangs bared without even realizing it, he steels himself against the action.

Once again, for the thousandth time of his existence, he resists the urge to sink below the depths of blood. The rotten desire is staved off, for now.

A creature like him shouldn't face this inner torment, night after bloody night.

He should by all rights be out _there_, _with_ the others of his kind, indulging his wicked thirst for the wine that fills all men's veins. Countless more have fallen, just as he is perpetually on the edge of doing. So many have given in to the bloodlust, and perhaps lost their minds in the process.

But not Bruce. He is different than the rest, if for no other reason than because he is so very similar, save for one glaring discrepancy.

He tends to wall away the memories of his past life. His only real life, he supposes; for now, he is not alive. Not in the traditional sense of the word, anyway. The others have all done the same – one, in particular, insists his time before being fatefully bitten never existed, and makes up the most outlandish of stories about it every night.

And the worst part is, it lures people in. Mortal folk _want_ to hear the tragic story of how their simple fellow among them got bitten by a vampire, and transformed beyond recognition into one himself. Changed forever, immortal in the annals of time, and destined to seek blood evermore. All due to one unlucky bad day.

But none of _his_ stories matter. They hold no value to him, or to the rest of time. All that matters is the magic spell they seem to work on people, as they draw closer and closer, utterly _entranced_ by the chords his words have struck in their hearts, only to cease their heartbeats forever as he sinks his yellowed fangs and paints them red in the ocean of their jugular veins, laughing in ecstasy at the taste of his chosen drug. A few, like the unfortunate lawyer and the even more unfortunate psychiatrist, survive and become vampires themselves. The rest – so many more – do not.

Bruce will happen upon another of this demon's victims tonight. He feels it in the wind that sighs with a distant laughter, in the chill he barely remembers he can still feel, in the solid weight of his bones that move only due to his heightened mind's command. This paranormal intuition is one of the many gifts of becoming a creature such as him. He has grown accustomed to utilizing this semi-foresight; the dramatically increased strength, speed, and agility; the keen sight, hearing, and scent of the perverse predator he has become. His mind has become a calculating one, every detail rendering itself useful to his keen intellect.

It is his chosen duty to use his mind and prowess to his current goals, instead of the murderous intentions of those like him. The answer of why chases him around his memories, through every defense he puts up to shut the pain out.

It would have been a tragic story, just as much as any that _he_ would conjure up on a nightly basis. A little eight-year-old boy, son of the wealthy aristocrats, out for a stroll at night. Rogue vampire catches them, can't control his bloodthirst. Ends the two parents' lives instantly, maims the boy in the neck and leaves, sated for the moment.

But the venom hadn't finished him as it had his parents, nor had it transformed him as it had countless others. He became the poster child of the one person whose life the vampires' poison had spared.

He had been – and still is – the first human mortal to make a full recovery from a vampire attack.

…or so everyone thinks.

No one but he had noticed, as well as perhaps his faithful servant. But over the years he felt the changes beginning, creeping into his conscience. The lust for blood was burgeoning in his throat. Fangs could be unsheathed from his gums. A new power in his body became apparent with each passing day.

And finally, when he had come of age, he secretly and anonymously took to the night with newly-fledged wings spread wide, ready for his prey.

But not to kill. And not to poison.

The drive was certainly there, constantly lurking underneath it all. He had to swallow it down again with more forceful determination each time it gathered its strength in his teeth. But never did he succumb to the siren call of another's ebbing pulse. It was this anomalous behavior that his reputation in the city nights was mounted on: he was, and would always be, the one vampire who never killed.

No one knew why, except for him. For it bit back a throbbing reminder every minute of his existence, though many times he found himself trying to ignore it.

He didn't kill, and didn't succumb, because he was still alive himself.

At least, somewhat. It certainly seemed many times that his heart was a dead weight in his chest, but when he least expected it, when he felt on the verge of betraying his long-sworn vow to never take a mortal's life – it beat. Maybe just once, maybe only a single flutter of a heartbeat, but there it was. And due to his heart's stubborn continuation, he could never in good conscience satisfy the desire of that other nature of his that clashed so recklessly with his living part.

Never to kill, and never to be satisfied. Such was the semi-life he was cursed to. Forever. Who knew if he would ever die, or if he would one day cease movement altogether and just lay in a coffin, unmoving but for that intolerable, unyielding telltale heart. But one thing he knew, that whether his body would live on or not, his name around the city streets – his symbol – would never die. In that element, he was truly an immortal. Incorruptible. Everlasting.

The wind picks up with its stench of fresh meat – fresh death – and he wrinkles his nose at the familiar aroma. Taking to flight, he leaps off the building and his arms-turned-wings blot out the heavens above him as he makes a course for the recent kill.

He knows who it is – those who say that vampires can tell the future aren't far away from the truth. The problem is, in not truly being an immortal creature of nightmare, he is not as nearly in tune with the currents of change as his rivals are. They can sniff out the dangers and opportunities much quicker than he, and arrive on the scene half an hour before him if they have a mind to. They surpass him as well in natural strength and speed – only his iron dedication to destroying the heathens that ravage his city has put him ahead of, or at least on equal footing with, the rest of them.

But what defeats them most of all is their fear of him.

Few realize that vampires can still feel certain emotions, but even as he changed over the years he still knew those faculties were intact. But fear is the feeling that takes over where compassion diminishes in the soul of the transformed, and it is this primal terror that he draws from to give him the greatest advantage over his opponents. They fear the great demi-vampire, The Traitor of Our Kind, The Mortals' Champion, and the threat he poses to their existence.

_They _are the ones who fear his fangs, not mortals.

All of them…but one.

And _he_ is the one that has killed the three girls Bruce descends upon now. _His_ rank stench is everywhere upon their still forms. They weren't lucky enough to stay alive long enough for the transformation. But, judging from their faces still frozen in agony, their murderer kept them alive long enough to _feel_ the venom's worst pains before the end.

There is barely any blood left in them. _He_ likes to take his time with them even after his victims' blood stops squirting out in steady lulls and spurts. These girls are shrunken and pale. No more liquid leaks from the ravaged sets of holes on their prominently exposed necks and eyes. Oh yes, the freak even prefers to pierce his fangs into their _eyes_, and laugh horrendously as blood and vitreous humor swell like blasphemous tears.

It is moments like this that Bruce's heart likes to assert its existence, and beats rapid and hollow in his chest as he walks closer to the three prepubescent girls' sorry remains.

"Beautiful, wouldn't you say?"

He could almost say those words in unison with the voice, so powerful is the impending pseudo-psychic plague that swallows his mind three seconds prior to the spoken sentence. It is only ever such an acute sense, he knows, with _this _particular creature.

Out of the night steps the immortal menace, dark wings tinged to look almost an eerie glowing purple in the moonlight. None wear wings as true a black as Bruce's. He sticks to the shadows unless called upon to fight his demons, and _this_ demon has never preferred backstage in the city's nightly dark performance.

The phosphorescent green eyes appear pupil-less and luminous, until another step closer reveals them otherwise. That is the most visible difference about this vampire that named his menacing self "the Joker"; most other vampires' eyes grow to a glowing yellow or a blood-stricken red. But it seems that, as all things do with this creature, he has even surpassed those despicable levels. He is certainly a different class of demon.

But then, so is Bruce, whose eyes have never changed from their pristine shade of blue, even after the many years that have passed since his attack.

Bruce regards the filth of decay and rot that composes the aura of the winged and moldy-haired heathen. The Joker steps towards him on the opposite side of the three girls, never taking his unnerving jewels of eyes from the dark figure.

Then he stops. "Then again, I guess you _wouldn't_ say so. But I certainly can't blame you, having never tried it before yourself." The corners of his mouth turn upward, distorting the ugly scars that stream from each – the only clue to the monster's past of where and how he was bitten. But Bruce highly speculates that he created those scars himself with his fangs; he has certainly bitten his own lips himself when the bloodlust surges too powerful within him, just to give him a chance of feeling _anything_ at all.

The twin green lights on the stark-white face leer with a mocking mirth. "Maybe one day, my dear fellow Bat, you'll learn for yourself the pleasure of the _taste_ that only a virgin's lifeblood can bring." At that his grin widens to expose glistening fangs, still glassy and bright with the stains of fresh blood, the trophy of his feast.

Bruce lunges with an inhuman screech that reminds him all too well when he hears it that he and his fellow winged freaks are no longer classified as human, but animals. He uses his anger to smother the slamming, repetitive punch from inside his chest that always rises up strongest in the Joker's presence. Anticipating the furious attack from his fellow predator, the Joker unsheathes his fangs in full and answers with a macabre shriek of his own, welcoming the struggle to come.

Wings unfurl and flap in the tumbling pair, Bruce screeching and the Joker shrilling as wingclaws tear at pale and cold flesh, ancient blood oozing out only due to momentum and gravity. Death wafts high in the frozen and blazing air. The keens of two immortal foes are all that obliterate the curtain of silence that Gotham City is shrouded in.

Bruce aims a kick at the Joker's ribcage, sending him flying through the air, but the Joker rolls with the action and uses his wings to control his flight backwards. Bruce answers by ascending as well with a snap of unfurled dark wings, and collides them both on top of the five-story building nearest them.

They squirm and tear at each other there for a while, before leaping after the other on the next building, and the next after that. Bruce's heart won't stop beating, which he desperately tries to control lest he reveal his rumored weakness to his enemy, but once again it refuses to obey his will. He never could control his heart around the Joker.

Finally their ultrasonic raptor-like battle cries carry them to the heights of a skyscraper, where the Joker can't stop laughing in the midst of their raucous pitches and formidable attacks. Bruce's heart clamors to be let out of his chest, so desperate are its movements, stronger and more painful than ever before. His wings stretch out above the Joker's, and tear bloodied holes through the leathery membranes as he pins him down beneath him, ready to inflict the next wound –

– when the Joker's right wing escapes Bruce's grasp as it transforms, morphing into a solid, bleeding arm –

– and settles its palm on Bruce's beating chest.

Bruce freezes, and wishes his heart would _for once_ do the same. But, stubborn as he is, it declines the notion, only beats even stronger against the blackened-purple palm that presses against his chest that long ago ceased to require breathing motions.

The Joker's eyes defy the impossible as they gleam brighter still, and refuse to release Bruce's paralyzed blue gaze. "So it _is_ true…" he murmurs in a tone so lethal that its power alone would have killed Bruce were he not dead already. Well, nearly dead, at least.

"I _told_ them it was true…" the Joker continues lowly, as Bruce remains helpless in the clutches of his eyes, "…but they never once believed me. They couldn't – they didn't want to – _imagine_ that a vampire could still have a heartbeat. Could still be…_alive…_"

His tongue licks over his bloodied fangs at the word, with such a sickening savor that Bruce's heart nearly quivers for a second. The word _alive_ for the Joker contains nothing but the invigorating promise of another kill.

The Joker's eyes flare wider at the split-second faltering of the pulse beneath his hand, and he pushes his touch with more force against Bruce's chest. His arm grows darker, signaling the transformation from arm to wing. From hand to claw.

Bruce instantly recoils and jumps away from the Joker. He cannot stand that inhumane touch so close to the last remnant he has left of his dying humanity. It sends a cold shock through his system that nearly stops his heartbeat for a painful second, before combating it with a flood of aching heat. Wanting to purge the corruption from his being.

The Joker approaches him with a single step. He counters with a step backward. He wants no more breaches of distance between him and this monster. Never again.

"You really are something, you know that?" that mad voice bridges over the distance between them. "Most of us, like me, we're known as the demons that climbed out of Hell. But _you_…"

He takes several steps forward, and Bruce has no more roof space behind him to step on. Instead he fans his wings wide in warning, but such a gesture has never deterred the Joker from him before.

"…_you_…are an_ angel fallen out of Heaven_, aren't you? Always trying to get back up and reach the top again, avoid falling the rest of the way and becoming the next Lucifer." He runs a wicked tongue along the length of one of his fangs. "The next _me_." Bruce stiffens. "And you wanna know what gave it all away?"

"What?" Bruce asks half-mockingly. It wouldn't hurt to realize what it was that revealed his hidden quest.

The Joker lights his eyes and brands them into Bruce's immortal remnants of his mortal soul. "Why," he slithers, "those _beautiful_ blue eyes, of course."

Their faces are inches from each other, the Joker menacing and powerful, Bruce wary and defensive, on the alert. Each tensed to the other's next move that they can barely decipher from the raging, chaotic current of sixth-sense that has towed them under at this close proximity to the other monster. At this point, anything is possible from the other, and any sort of reaction is beyond their control.

"Don't you want to know it?" the Joker whispers. His breath rakes Bruce's face with its fetid reek of decay. "Don't you want to know the taste? Just a _single_ _drop_ of mortal blood?" The fangs are bared tauntingly at him, still soaked and slicked with the girls' blood, less than an inch from Bruce's mouth. The Joker still senses the same temptation through the living pulse so close to him now, throbbing spasmodically and begging to be drained from the dark Bat's neck. Just _so…close…_

And there it is, as Bruce's teeth shoot forward the instant the Joker's fangs take hold, puncturing two clean and even holes through the other's lips. The Joker may be an undead vampire with no beating heart to speak of, but his blood still sits cold in his veins, and the instant it touches Bruce's fangs the pleasure sensors in his teeth scorch with agonizing electricity. He groans in surprise at the intensity of the high, and his own heart skips a few beats before returning with renewed vigor as his jaws clamp down even tighter around the mouth of the Joker. He relishes the pain of two equally brutal fangs sinking into his own flesh, and the Joker is yelling into his mouth at the unequaled sizzling euphoria that ravages his being as this impossible pulse releases the most delectable blood he has ever sunk his teeth into.

Their blood, warm and cold, dribbles down their pale chins as they cinch their jaws even tighter around each other, and wings unconsciously unfurl fully and hold aloft in full span behind them, reveling in this newfound addiction.

Bruce recedes in his bite's strength, only to snap his jaw harder still into the pale skin, eliciting a sharp cry from each of them. Blood surges against Bruce's fangs, and it is only after a few recurring fresh waves of the liquid do they both realize what it signifies.

Joker's heart has, against all expectations and scientific inquiries, begun to beat as well.

They break apart from each other at the revelation, and half-uncurl their eyelids to each other. The Joker is starry-eyed and triumphant, Bruce exhilarated and thirsting, and they smile slightly at their new secret vice before savagely piercing four new holes into their mouths, heartbeats squeezing together and wings folding to wrap around the other immortal's body.

For once, they have found what it truly means to be alive.

* * *

**A/N: I only have one request for a Christmas present this year: will someone PLEASE draw me a picture of Vampy!Bruce and Joker kissing each other bloody in each other's wings, or an inch apart with bloody fangs? It's just too sensual an image I just can't rest until I see it drawn, and I have no drawing skills. To whoever does, it would make me the happiest slash fangirl on the planet. Thankies in advance! **


	2. Toothache

Heartbeat

Chapter 2: Toothache

Bruce barely knows what he is seeing anymore. His teeth feel on _fire_, more potent and lethal than ever before. He never realized just _how_ deadly the two natural weapons could be until this night. Had the Joker been a mortal, he would be long gone by now, what with the ferocity and savagery in which Bruce's fangs have latched into his lips.

But all Bruce can think of anymore is his fangs and the blood around them. Burning, tearing, flowing, ebbing, humming, groaning, _more_…

The dark hook of his wingclaw has torn through the Joker's greening hair, sending a quiet stream of more of the cherry pie liquid down his scalp, toward the base of his neck. Bruce doesn't know how he senses every cell of the demon's blood so acutely, for his eyes have been closed this entire time…but he doesn't give a damn at present.

The Joker feels the wet blood lap at his neck, and with a sudden hungry snarl lurches forward, driving his fangs ever deeper into Bruce's lips.

They had never left the edge of the rooftop.

Bruce teeters backward, and can't snap his wings open fast enough from the Joker's body to catch himself. Entwined in each other's leathery membranes, they plummet down to the merciless, damp concrete.

Bruce yells in shock, but this appears to have been the Joker's intention – with a wicked cackle and a lightning blur of movement he spreads his own wings, and it is all Bruce can do to hold on for dear half-life with wings and aching teeth as the deranged monster glides them away with a howl of macabre laughter.

Finally Bruce is able to pull his mouth away from the rapidly increasing timpani of the Joker's arteries to shout, "What the _hell_ are you doing?"

The Joker flashes a shredded smile and a pair of gleaming green eyes. "Taking us somewhere…better _suited_ to our purposes."

Bruce isn't sure exactly what he means, but is quite certain he doesn't want to stick around and find out. He is just about to voice his objections – which will most likely entail a more violent response as follow-up – when the Joker ends his haphazard glide and turns them sharply into a window.

Glass rains in a dizzying crystalline shower around them, and at their entrance the young mortal couple inside ends their foreplay routine abruptly. The color drains from their faces until they look like wide-eyed versions of the pale-faced demons themselves. They recognize the shapes of Bat-wings that are all they can discern from the projectile that interrupted their anniversary night.

It may look like their hearts have stopped beating, but the ears of the two intruders can clearly attest to the contrary.

The couple tries to slink away, hoping against hope that they haven't been seen, while knowing all the while that it is their unfaithful heartbeats that give them away long before a vampire turns to rely upon its sight. But when a blue eye appears from the mess of wings, they surge with hope.

A hope that instantly fades the moment a green eye shows itself as well.

Bruce sees the spark in the heathen's eye, and lurches forward to pin him down with a sharp, piercing shrill. The Joker takes hold of his throat with his wingclaw and hisses through his fangs, mad emeralds glowing with bloodlust.

The couple gets the message and takes their hurried leave for another hotel – hell, another _city_ – in which to spend their anniversary (1).

Bruce slashes with his claws at the Joker's face as he grabs a hold of his head, and makes to throw him across the room and into the wall. But the Joker, in an unexpected move, darts his head forward like the venomous snake he is, latching his fangs into Bruce's right shoulder and sucking ravenously.

Bruce's heart thunders to a deafening pitch in his ears, rivaled only by his razor shriek that pierces the night just as sharply as the Joker's fangs have pierced him. It shouldn't feel this electric; it should be nothing but pain, and _bad_ pain at that. Not _this_ strangling euphoria that wants to rip his guts out with each and every scream…

The Joker has pushed him onto the bed before he regains as much of his senses as his body will allow. Blood that still runs from his mouth flecks into the air with each human moan and inhuman screech. His eyes squeeze shut in nerve-numbing bliss. The Joker pushes his full weight down on top of him, slathers his tongue all along the new wounds he has dug into his dark Bat's shoulder.

After a particularly raucous vampiric cry, the Joker chuckles. "I completely agree," he murmurs lowly into Bruce's shoulder. "Those two would've been good snacks and all," – he dips his tongue into the puncture marks, eliciting a guttural growl from Bruce – "but why settle for the unwilling, when you can make the sex fun on _both_ ends?"

Bruce becomes a statue at his words. Most specifically at one word in particular.

The Joker senses the transition in his fangmate, and cocks a brow curiously at the change in demeanor. He traces the tip of a fang past the edge of a wound to procure another one of those delicious cries. But Bruce remains silent as the graves they both should have filled ages ago. His eyes stare into the suspicious stain on the ceiling as he attempts to register what he just heard the demon say.

He turns his head to the Joker, looking for all the world like a deer in the green headlights.

"What do you mean…_sex_?"

Now it is the Joker's turn to look surprised, and his pale brow furrows around his luminous green eyes. Slowly, his face coils into action, as an inevitable brew of giggles spouts up deep in his throat –

– until he can't contain it any longer and bursts out in squeals of incredulous laughter.

If Bruce were still completely human he would have blushed bright red. The Joker had clearly misunderstood the nature of his question; of _course_ he knew what sex was. He may be undead, but he was still in some senses a man; he wasn't ignorant. But…that the Joker had brought it up, while he was enslaved to this jolting current of rapture from the monster's fangs…it couldn't be…it couldn't _mean…_

"Oh, that's _rich_!" the Joker hoots. "Wow, what a great _idiot_ I am! Of _course _you don't…don'…doheehaHEEHAHAH!" He descends into his laughter again. "Oh, sweet demons in Hell, I _never_…"

Bruce scoots away from him on the bed, making to get up and leave. There is _no way_ that – whatever this is – could ever _possibly_ be related to sex. Sex is something human, something he was surprised to still possess a diluted appetite for as he matured through his semi-immortal years. It is not something to be associated with his relations to the bloodthirsty animals he encounters every night, least of all _this_ creature…

The Joker's wingclaw snags him on his chest before he can get out of reach, and with a sudden display of ferocious strength the monster has Bruce pinned to the bed again. He still shakes with sniggers, but has regained himself enough to look directly into the edgy blue eyes.

"My mistake for not enlightening you," the Joker says, "but I just assumed you _knew_, being a vampire and all. But then again, you're not _truly_ a vampire, are you?" He giggles once at the realization that takes true root in his mind. "Why, _I'm_ your first taste, after all this time! You finally chose, out of all the other suckers out there, little old _me_ to sink your teeth into!" He moves his wingclaw up to stroke down Bruce's face in a tenderness of questionable sincerity. "I'm honored, dearest."

Bruce yanks the hook away from his face with his own claw, frustration seething in his eyes. "And _what _exactly is it that I don't know?" he snaps.

The Joker spreads his fangs in a sinister smile. "Why, how vampires have sex, darling."

Bruce is still confused as to what the Joker is referring to, not to mention as to why the menace feels the need to bring this up _now_. Slowly things are starting to add up in his head, though, and his fangs are positively _aching_ in his mouth, but he still knits his eyebrows together and says dryly, "There's a difference when it's vampires?"

The Joker bubbles out a laugh again. "Oh sweetbat, you still don't get it! There's _all the difference in the world!"_

Without warning, the laughing demon surges forward with his fangs again, tearing into Bruce's lips once more by biting yet another two sets of holes. Bruce's fangs respond automatically, and at the contact of the two pairs of venom-secreting structures the reaction is instantaneous: Bruce arches up into the Joker, the Joker slams Bruce with his body back into the bed, their teeth become an inferno of rupturing sensation, Bruce is choking down his own blood, nothing makes _sense_, nothing else _matters_ –

The Joker maneuvers his teeth to rake their saber points down the length of Bruce's own fangs, dragging down the blood-soaking canines in a gesture simultaneously cruel and gentle, pleasant and agonizing. Bruce leans his head back in a lengthy moan that catches in the back of his throat. He shudders. His teeth are sizzling, fierce in their want for more contact, more blood and teeth.

The Joker has dragged his fangs to dig the most delicate twin turrets down his chin, just barely breaking the ivory flesh. The pressure minutely lessens, inch by inch, until the toxic tips are just barely brushing the skin along his exposed neck.

Bruce hadn't even realized how far he had thrown his head back, an action he is always _so_ careful to guard against when around the vampires. It's common sense to safeguard your neck flesh when the fanged ones are on the hunt. But under the actions of the Joker and the carnal wants of his aching teeth, he had simply…reacted. And now his bare neck is exposed with all its red rivers just beneath the chalk surface, trembling in what he realizes the Joker had meant.

…_make it fun on both ends…_

The Joker is at his Adam's apple, taking his time as he always does, drawing it out as he lightly sucks at the taut skin, letting his fangs dance just on the edges of penetration.

_Why settle for the unwilling…_

…_PENETRATION…_

"…you're joking," Bruce gasps. This _can't_ be what the wretch had meant…

The Joker pauses in his ministrations, lips and fangs still lingering at the base of Bruce's neck, and raises his green eyes of Hell into the blue of the fallen angel.

"I know my name can be misleading in that way, honeybear," he intones darkly, "but this time I'm _not_ joking."

If Bruce were still alive right now he would've probably passed out from hyperventilation, but as it is his lungs remain as useless as the vestigial organs they will always remain to be. But his heart has skyrocketed into the realms of sheer insanity at this point, which is what he is about to indulge in, he just knows it. The years of never taking blood into his fangs, and now he pays for it with his ruin.

"It's quite intriguing," the Joker continues as he relishes the feel of the throbbing pulse against his fangs, separated only by a thin layer of skin, "just how long you've been able to avoid the taste. After all," he smirks against Bruce's neck, "it's only part of our nature. They don't call it blood_lust_ for nothing."

He drifts his head to the side, a practiced mouth tracing the familiar pathways of vessels, smearing his own blood that oozes from his lips along the way, honing in on the prominent jugular as Bruce stiffens like a corpse.

"And it only makes _sense_, if you really pause to think about it. We don't _have_ heartbeats. And no blood pumping equals no boners, no?"

His bottom lip drags along Bruce's clavicle. Marking territory. Bruce can't stand the way his eyes are pulled like magnets to the Joker's mouth, engrossed in the entire process.

"Now, between two vampires, it's purely..._recreational_. Just to have a good time together." A single green eye rises from the Joker's task to wink at Bruce, a strange quirk looming in its depths. "Our…_procreative_ intercourse…well," he breathes a low, light cackle into Bruce's neck, "you already _know_ what that is."

_So they propagate their race through rape with the occasional murder on the side_, Bruce thinks with revulsion. It makes him want to vomit, had he still possessed that capacity of a human.

He refuses to refer to the vampires as "we." He is _not_ one of them.

He _isn't_.

"Maybe tonight, your opinion of that will change," the Joker muses into Bruce's skin, still referring to what he was speaking of aloud, but with that knowing edge of sensing his fellow demon's thoughts as only he can. "Once I show you just how…_good_ it can be."

The Joker's fangs are unsheathed to their full extent, bared and ready for the familiar yet foreign taste they crave beyond any other bath. Bruce's neck glistens with the Joker's blood and saliva, lingers with his scent. Marked as _his_. Bruce wants to clench his neck back down, away from the fangs-turned-phallic-tools that hover an inch above his jugular vein. But his neck and newly-unleashed instincts aren't letting him, and he proffers his neck up in paralysis as the fangs lower to half an inch above his flesh, a centimeter, _a millimeter_…

The Joker slowly, _slowly_, opens his jaw almost like a yawn, bottom teeth resting as anchors on Bruce's lower neck. His fang tips are just barely grazing the skin, yielding little more than two indentations on the surface. His body vibrates in the anticipation of the thrill.

"Would you just get _on_ _with_ _it_?" Bruce rasps. Anticipation is not having nearly as positive an effect on him as it is on the practiced torturer.

That one sentence of permission is all the Joker needs to hear, and his lips pull up for a flash into one final grin before locking back into position. His fangs begin their descent.

All is relatively silent as a graveyard. The lancing pain hits the most sensitive of targets in Bruce's nerve receptors, only gradually intensifying with every dragging second. The tips of the fangs are imbedded, like the initial prick of a shot at the doctor's office.

But from there it only worsens. The fangs bury deeper, slicking past his flesh and sinew, blood surging frantically to meet them and mix with the venom that leaks uncontrollably from the glands tucked in the anterior catacombs of the Joker's fangs.

Bruce has seen the Joker feast countless times, but _never_ has he been quite this quiet about it.

Nor has the monster ever quivered to quite this degree while engaged in the act.

When the fangs are engulfed up to half their length, Bruce is the first to break the silence with a less-than-dignified moan that sticks in his throat like a whimper. It only serves to buzz the pain even further, and vibrates against the Joker's teeth. The continual resurge of liquid against his questing teeth, reinforced by the sudden vibratory sensation, sends the Joker's senses reeling even further. He hums into Bruce's neck, sending chills through the dark Bat's system.

The fangs continue their way in. Bruce is keening with increased voracity with clenched lips and eyes squinted shut, brow tied together yet constantly shifting and writhing, attempting to settle on the most tolerable position to steel against the pain.

But the pain won't quit, and now a more silent fire is burning through his veins – the venom is lacing through his limbs, centering in his chest within the cavities of his heart, intent on its course to reach the coronary arteries and infect his cardiac muscle with its life-altering drug. Bruce, however, has already been through this process, and the venom instead is uncoiling the most insatiable pit of arousal in his body that he has ever experienced. It's liquid fire, and he's drowning in the Joker's volcano.

The fangs are sheathed to the gums. They lay there, Bruce writhing in miniscule motions, grasping for more comfortable adjustments and finding none. The Joker quivers on top of him and makes no sound.

He is lost in the elixir he has found in Bruce's neck.

Bruce arches his neck further into the Joker's mouth, spurred on by instinct as his rational thought diminishes by the second. Suddenly an uncharacteristic intake of unneeded air rushes into the Joker's nostrils that rest flush with Bruce's jaw line. Bruce flutters his eyelids open at the breeze, and wonders what it means.

He finds out as the hissing from the Joker's mouth transforms into a murmur, then a shuddering groan, finally building louder and louder into a great scream of exultation, layered rich and thick with the high-pitched shrills of the undead, yet underscored with a venomous trace of a guttural roar. Of a human roar.

The Joker's teeth are burning in the pits of _Hell_.

He lets loose at that instant with a feral snarl, snapping his jaw with all his might with an insistent moan of euphoric madness. Bruce arches off the bed at the jagged gashes that are ripped through the meat on his neck, and screams in a blistering storm of torment. He yelps in pain mixed with that sweet, horrific brand of static pleasure, while the Joker tears strangled cries from his throat and sends them to mingle with the flood of Bruce's lifeblood that scatters around his teeth, down their necks, into the sheets, slopping every which way it can get.

The Joker twists his neck in irrational fervor to gnaw into more of that sinewy vault that stores this aphrodisiacal nectar. He nips up further to Bruce's earlobe, and a chunk of muscle is just barely exposed from his assaults.

But Bruce is lost to the sensations. All he wants is for it to stop and for it to never end, to cease and to go on _forever_. This…this is…the flames at the gates of some twisted _Heaven_…

The Joker's fangs, his lips, his teeth, his tongue, lick and ravage and rub and nuzzle and _destroy_ everywhere in the left side of Bruce's neck. He flies like the wildfire he sprang from, never settling, always suckling somewhere new, yelling and screaming against the power he has never before chanced to come into contact with before. Never before this was he ever this high upon taking another's neck for his own. Never had this much pleasure been produced from it, not from Harvey, not from Harley, not even from the three girls earlier this evening. Nothing like what this immortal heartbeating Bat could give to him.

The Bat is flexing his neck up into the Joker's mouth, arching over and over into the joyous annihilation that put him in this condition those many years ago. But that was terrifying and had none of these thrills of bliss. That attack has no place compared to _this_...

At a particularly aching throb that resounds all throughout his teeth, Bruce jolts his eyes open in an ungodly moan. His vision is spinning, but at the same time in better clarity than ever before. His hearing has soared as well, and beyond his own pulse and both his and the Joker's dying euphoric screams, he hears the thudding, the newest sensation of them all, clamoring, _begging _for his aching teeth to gain access…

His eyes alight on the writhing and twitching expanse of the Joker's neck, with the pulse he recently introduced to it clanging in the demon's veins.

It needs to be let out.

He wastes no time in drawing out the process like the Joker did; he has no experience, no technique to use upon the hapless and inexpert victim – and the Joker, he knows, is neither one of these things. Besides, _Bruce_ cannot wait any longer, and nothing draws Bruce forward but raw instinct and – even more innate – fundamental _need_, as he vies against the Joker's strength pressed against him and pounces forward to gouge his fangs into the pale tissue.

He and the Joker both roar in horrendous and furious rapture.

Bruce all but mauls into the Joker's veins, spurting cold blood everywhere in a powerful rhythmic spray every half-second. The Joker is brought into a sudden new horizon of pain and joy, never having received this treatment in his memory. And all the purple-winged heathen can muster is a repetitive whine into Bruce's neck for more.

Their wings fold and unwrap chaotically in their bent tunnels of thought, changing from hand to wing and back again in uneven textures and mixtures. They at last settle somewhat in the savage single talons at each dark wingcrest, and claw viciously into each other's hair and backs. They push each other's necks closer to them at one point, then change directions and tangle into dark brown and moldy green locks the next moment, in the only warped brand of affection that two so twisted could ever conjure up for the other.

They drink their banquets – the Joker's warm, Bruce's chilled – down their gullets with greedy slurps and lascivious moans, but their throats only take the excess flow of whatever drips past the sieves of their fangs. The piercing teeth absorb the blood into their surfaces, which further spurs the venom secretion into each other's veins and launches the pair into even further groans of ecstasy as their teeth ache and throb anew.

Bruce is soaring into Nirvana now, he can tell, and some faraway corner of his mind tells him that this is better than human sex, better than anything. He can fight the call of the Joker's blood off no longer, and his new indulgence with this monster is sending his body into tremors and shouts and uneven vampiric pitches and the Joker is doing the same and he knows they must be _so close_ –

This is it.

Right as he hits the peak, Bruce _knows_ this is it. His teeth flood their most potent reserve of venom yet, the kind that he has analyzed over and over in hidden laboratories, searching for its secret that finally plunges the victim into the boneclawing depths of insatiable immortality. It is a drug that has only been proven successful when secreted in its most natural form, and he and the Joker are entwined and united in this most natural ejection of all.

It is only afterward, when the high diminishes and deposits them back on the shores of reality again, that Bruce realizes just _how much_ they were shaking, and _how loud_ they were screaming. The dilapidated bed frame and the soreness of his vocal cords are testament enough to that fact.

As far as Bruce knows, they lay there unmoving for an eternity; they very well could have, given their immortal states. But finally he stirs, and the motion ends up almost mimicking an affectionate nuzzle into the Joker's bloodied neck.

The Joker hums quietly at the touch, whether from the pleasure or the pain – or perhaps, Bruce muses, the pleasure of both. The Mortal's Champion then feels a slippery lick on his ear as the Joker sloppily curls his tongue, dripping with both their blood, up into the spiraling contours of the ear shell, down to the lobe to suckle with teasing gossamer lips.

Neither of them speaks, until Bruce slowly, weakly, shifts his right wing into an arm and gingerly feels the over-exaggerated hickey mark on his maimed neck. Inspecting the damage. It throbs dully, and stings at his touch, but in light of all the bliss it finally brought him, he supposes it's a fair price for his indulgence.

"I'm going to regret this in the morning," he mutters, not really meaning to voice the thought aloud, but it earns a weak but cunning chuckle from his satanic companion.

"Good thing it's not morning yet," the Joker points out. He's recovering faster from the orgasmic high, having been accustomed to similar sensations a thousand times over before, but even he is thrown into a loopy state of delirium from just _how_ intense it was. No one else had ever brought him to such lofty heights of bloodlusting climax before. Especially with the newer sensations that he still can't shake off just yet, something long-forgotten…or maybe not even utilized before at all, unneeded until now.

In a flurry of wings Bruce rolls to straddle the Joker as his wings transform fully into arms, and his sated, ache-free fangs retract as he smothers the Joker in a fangless, venomless, simply _human_…kiss. The Joker is surprised, but the unexpected sensations bloom further, and he isn't about to start fighting off a new source of potential pleasure anytime soon.

Their devastated necks are spurting blood with an increasing tempo, and the Joker ponders his heart that has unexpectedly begun to beat with a life of its own now. He wonders if he'll be able to control it in the future, for he is sure that he'll never get a good grip on it while _this_ Bat is around, if his experiences so far tonight are anything to go by.

"Remember what you told me," Bruce utters after breaking his initiated kiss for a few heartbeats, "about how vampires don't get boners because their hearts can't beat?"

"Uh-huh," the Joker slurs before returning for another sloppy kiss. He wants to chase back the awakening stirrings in his gut that just feel so ultimately _right_ with this blue-eyed demon, and doesn't really take in Bruce's words until he pauses in the kiss, turns the thought around in his head, and opens his eyes slowly to Bruce's.

He looks down their bodies, and the physical evidence is there. Making it so very obvious that, unlike all other vampires, these two _do_ have heartbeats. Very, very _prominent_ heartbeats.

"Oh," is all a mystified Joker can say before Bruce invades the Joker's mouth with his lips, tongue, teeth, chewing on the bulging scars and licking everything he can gain purchase on within the Joker's lips. The Joker responds, and for one who never does anything so banally human, oh does he _respond_.

They are both quite thankful that it isn't morning just yet.

* * *

(1) Lolz, imagining Dom and Mal from Inception in this couple's place. Now _that's_ gonna show up quite a bit in their dreams, no? xD Oh my God, as they walk together in their old age through their limbo world, there's gonna be random hot gay vampires making out in the sky in the background…CROSSOVER TIME!

**Yay, vampire hicky-sex! :D Kayliana, dear that she is, took me up on my request last chapter, and drew me a lovely Vamp B/J pic, and it got me inspired to get my ass back in gear and FINALLY write this sucker (if you'll pardon the pun). That, plus my renewed love affair with Lady Gaga, because is it just me, or does the song "Teeth" really fit this fic? Makes me think of a dirty vampire nightclub, where everyone's giving everyone else hickeys to this song. I'm so bad…**

**And yes, this is an original concept I thought up in my obscenely twisted mind: how vampires ought to have sex as the bloodthirsty demons they are. And Bruce and Joker know how to get it done right. Oh, those boys…**

…**and I'm fairly certain I'm doing a third part to this fic, with the human sex combined with vampire sex, so Bruce can teach the Joker a thing or two as well. And c'mon…anal intercourse AND vampiric neck-sucking, with both mortal AND immortal orgasms combined? Who WOULDN'T want to write that? xDD Not sure when I'll get to it, or to Always and Always (school's a bitch, what can I say), but I'm definitely not abandoning you readers anytime soon. I love you guys! As always, reviews are among the greatest gifts you can give to me. Let me know what you think. :) And have a wondiferous 2011!**


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